


The Holmes to your Moriarty

by Solita_Belle



Series: The Holmes to your Moriarty [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 16:59:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1395445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solita_Belle/pseuds/Solita_Belle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where there is a Moriarty, there must also be a Holmes. Now let's see if she is up to the task.</p><p>AN: Based on 'Business' by esama. Reading that first is required to understand the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Curiousity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [esama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Business](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113588) by [esama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama). 



**1\. Curiousity**

Hermione Granger was born a curious girl. Her parents noticed that particular trait in her at a very young age, and like the intelligent people they were, swiftly identified that as a potential problem. Oh, the Grangers loved their darling little girl to death, make no mistake; but that didn’t mean they ever thought (naively) that other people would find a child with endless questions and no sign of noticing when whoever she was pestering had had enough as endearing as they did. Therefore, they took it very seriously when one day a teacher in kindergarten finally snapped at Hermione for trailing after him all day asking every question under the sun. To be fair, the man had been exhausted after a day running interference between fourteen hyperactive children, and several questions were awkward and/or personal at best (or as John Granger suspected, totally out of said teacher’s ledge.) Any other parents might have just dismissed the incident after yelling at the teacher for a few minutes and comforting their child, but the Grangers, looking at their daughter’s tear-streaked face, knew that they had better address the problem at once.

During the next few years, Hermione’s curious streak, which did not lessen in the slightless as she grew up, was carefully redirected toward independent exploration and away from easily annoyed people. She was taught to find answers for herself, either by consulting the books in her father’s study or by simply watching and listening. The Grangers were proud at their daughter’s intelligence and observing skills, which proved itself in her grades when she finally went to school, even if she still had the habit of trusting the information she found in books too easily. It was worrying, however, that as she acquired more and more knowledge, Hermione also developed the tendency to lord it over others, most commonly her schoolmates. That habit did nothing to endear her to others, and throughout primary school she was rendered a loner, even bullied for it, especially when sometimes her inborn curiousity still peeked out and poked its nose into others’ business. Her parents had been working on plans to break her of that habit when one day her Hogwarts letter came, and she was off to the magical boarding school in Scotland for nine months a year.

They should have been firmer on their daughter’s bad habits. After all, curiousity tends to kill more than just cats.


	2. The Boy-who-lived

**2\. The Boy-who-lived**

To Hermione, the news that she was a witch, and that there was an entire world out there which neither she nor her parents previously knew about, was a thoroughly exciting news, and was met with great enthusiasm. Witches and wizards, spells and enchantments, things she thought only existed in fairytales, were real! After the first reaction of disbelief, which was wholly understandable in Muggle-borns according to Professor McGonagall, Hermione just couldn’t wait to explore all the rules of this new, magical (literally!) world. Did the fairytales have it right? Were there really dragons and unicorns? Did witches really fly on broomsticks?

So it came to no one’s surprise when the moment she was let loose in Flourish and Blotts, the bookstore in Diagon Alley, Hermione took it as her life mission to hoard as many books about every aspect of the magical world as she could get her hands on (and really, her parents should have known better.) She only stopped when her mom put her foot down after being confirmed by Professor McGonagall that Alchemy was an advance subject Hermione had no hope to understand until at least sixth year, and by then the pile of books on her hands was threatening to bury her with every step. Returning home, she used the full five weeks before going to Hogwarts and actually joining the magical world to devour as much information as she could. In her quest for knowledge, she read every single book she brought, summarized them into bullet points in her several notebooks, and practiced spells with her newly acquitted wand (ten-and-three-quarter inches vine wood, core dragon heartstring) . It was when she was going through the history texts that she came to know of him:

 _“... He-who-must-not-be-named was finally defeated on Halloween night, 1981, when he came after the Potters in Godric Hollow. It was confirmed by Aurors who investigated the scene that he personally killed both Auror James Potter and his wife Lily Potter nee Evans with the Avada Kedavra curse, before attempting the same curse on their son, Harry James Potter, then fifteen months old. It is still unknown why the curse failed, but traces of magic still presented after the fact showed that the Killing Curse, infamous for killing those who it hits without fail, bounced off the baby Harry Potter and hit He-who-must-not-be-named, ending his reign of terror. To this day Harry Potter is still the only one recorded survived the Killing Curse, with only a lightning bolt scar to show for it, and is known as the Boy-who-lived throughout the magical world...”_ – Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts.

Hermione did a little calculating. Harry Potter was the same age as she was. That meant he was in her year! Hogwarts was the best Wizarding school in Britain, so he would also be there came September first. She wondered what made him so special, to be the only one to survive a guaranteed killing curse. Different theories ran wildly around in her mind, along with every question she wanted to find answers for about him. Was he super powerful? Did he had some kind of blessing that stopped the curse for him, and if he did, how come nobody could find it?

... Which was why she was so disappointed when she finally saw him, sitting along with a red-headed boy who he so pointedly ignored on the Hogwarts Express, clearly feigning sleep. He looked nothing like the boy she had been imagining in her head and more like a street urchin with his baggy Muggle clothing, his wild hair and bony figure. He was also half-a-head shorter than average height for a boy their age. Had the redhead, Ron Weasley, not took it to himself to also introduce the git, she wouldn’t had believed he was the hero of the wizarding world. In fact, when he couldn’t feign sleep to ignore her any longer and finally cracked his eyes open to give her an once-over, only to mumble “Annoying” and close them again, Hermione had been so miffed that she turned away at once and spent the rest of the train ride convincing herself that that _git_ just couldn’t possibly be Harry Potter.

He was though, which the Sorting proved to her. He was sorted into Ravenclaw and she to Gryffindor, where all the best wizards and witches had been in. The rest of the student body seemed surprised (and in a couple of twins’ cases dismayed) that he hadn’t been sorted into Gryffindor, but Hermione was too busy feeling gleeful that he hadn’t made it into _her_ House to care. He _obviously_ wasn’t brave or righteous enough for Gryffindor, and what kind of Ravenclaw spend a seven-hour train ride without a book anyway?

 

As it turned out, he wasn’t a good Ravenclaw either. 

The Ravenclaw, as a whole, cared about academics. Hermione would have made a good Ravenclaw, the Sorting Hat told her, had she not been so intent on getting into Gryffindor instead. The Ravens took great pride in their academical results, as well as any additional knowledge about things not covered in class. It was typical for them to occupy at least two tables in the library at any given time, pouring over books of various subject related or just only distantly-related to schoolwork. (There was always a pride in Hermione she kept silence about that she could still out-Ravenclaw any Ravenclaw despite being in Gryffindor.) Over all, no matter the differences in studying styles or personal time-tables or even personal interests, Ravenclaws, even the first-years after their settling-in period, uniformly maintained at least a better-than-average mark in every subject they studied.

Everyone _but_ Harry Potter.

Oh, he poured over books alright. The total time spent in the library of him alone outstripped all the Gyffindor first years except Hermione put together, and that was certainly no small feat. And somehow, despite all that, his marks are barely average, and in Potions not even that. Briefly, Hermione entertained the thought that that meant Potter was a retard, (because anyone who spent so much time studying and not even get an Acceptable average just had to be, right?) but then any self-respecting Ravenclaw with _that_ bad grades would be rendered desperate and try double hard to improve. Potter just couldn’t seem to care less. He continued to get barely passing marks, never volunteered to answer questions in classes, and practiced spellworks just enough to pass by. Sometimes between her own studying of various subjects, Hermione let her mind muse a bit on the subject of the boy who was the farthest thing from everyone’s expectation, and wondered idly, just what did he read so much for, if he really didn’t care about schoolwork?

Then the Halloween Troll Incident happened, which Hermione only survived by some sort of unexplained luck, and any lingering obsession (that she totally was _not_ harboring) about the Boy-who-lived was banished from her mind.

Afterall, comparing to the fact that something is being hidden on the third floor corridor with someone desperately going after it enough to painstakingly smuggle a _Troll_ of all things into the castle, the Potter boy was _boring_.


	3. Tom Marvolo Riddle and the Chamber of Secrets

**3\. Tom Marvolo Riddle and the Chamber of Secrets**

The first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry ended leaving Hermione seriously miffed and disgruntled. There had been so many unanswered questions and mysteries that the teachers just skirted over and the rest of the school contently forgot about. Hermione sometimes wanted to scream and tear her hair out; how were they not even the slightless bit curious?! 

How no one so much as _wondered_ about why the third floor corridor was suddenly and unexplainedly deemed forbidden when it never was before was a mystery she thought she would never find the answer for. Even the Weasley twins, no doubt the most curious of the student body (saved for maybe the closeted Hermione), only went so far as to take a peek into the corridor, discovering the _three-head dog_ any idiot could tell was guarding something in there, and contently called it a job well-done. After listening to them whispering excitedly about it in the common room, she just couldn’t help from banishing any regard for rules to the back of her mind and visiting the place herself. And then someone let a Troll into the castle, (which was so _clearly_ a diversion it was almost physically painful) only to have it mysteriously and systematically dispatched no more than _twenty steps_ away from the girl bathroom where she had been at the time (crying her eyes out, thanks to the courtesy of that Weasley boy’s cruel words, but it wasn’t like she would _ever_ admit that.) 

She was no closer to finding out whatever the Hell had been going on in the castle when mere months before school ended, something got all the teachers in an uproar. There were hush conversations at the staff table every meal, and the students rejoined when the teachers became distracted enough to not notice them chatting in class, forget to assign homework, or even cancel classes seemingly for no reason. It was only thanks to a snipplet of a furious conversation that Hermione was lucky enough to catch in a corner of the Great Hall between Professor McGonagall and Hagrid the Ground Keeper that she got an important piece of information: “... and now we will have to tell Nicolas Flamel that we got it _missing_...!” It took Hermione only a few days of intense research to piece what had happened: something of Nicolas Flamel, most likely the famous Philosopher’s Stone, an artifact that could transform any material into gold and produce the Elixir of Life, had been kept in the third floor corridor all year, likely to keep safe, and now had been stolen. And then just a week later, Professor Quirrel, the clumsy, shy DAAD Professor, quietly disappeared from the school. Hermione couldn’t say she missed him, because by all accounts he wasn’t a very good professor, but she did wonder if his disappearance, or that of the janitor’s cat (that all the students were glad to see gone) had anything to do with the thief of the Stone. There was also the brief disappearance of Draco Malfoy, the loud mouth bully in Slytherin, which prompted another search throughout the castle, but it didn’t seem to be connected, because a week later he turned up just fine, insisting that he didn’t know he had been missing at all. She didn’t find out anything more about the matter due to a frustrating lack of any further information, and the question of where the Hell the Stone had gone kept pounding in her mind all summer, sometimes even woke her up in the middle of the night.  
Which was why on Halloween night of the following year, when a new mystery unfold with a petrified Dean Thomas - a fellow Muggle-born from Griffindor - and a message from a self-proclaim Heir of Slytherin, Hermione swore to herself that she would _not_ have _this_ mystery play out without her.

 

Despite her best efforts, months went by without revealing any real answer. She painstakingly read every book in the library that got even a slightless chance of mentioning either the Chamber of Secrets – which she only knew of by prying the information out of Professor Binns – or the Heir of Slytherin, but the best she got out of all those effort was the same rumor that circled the castle: before he left the school, Salazar Slytherin _might have_ built a secret chamber inside the castle that no one knew about, which _might have_ held some sort of monster that would hopefully help his heir purge the school of those with impure blood. In short, _useless_. In the meantime, Muggle-born students kept getting petrified left and right, making everyone paranoid and seriously tried Hermione’s already frayed nerves.

Her frustration about the non-result must have shown, because one day Neville Longbottom, a painfully shy boy in her year and the _other_ loner of Gryffindor, timidly approached her in the common room and said: “Eh, Hermione, ... I know you’re worried, but if you stay in a group like the teacher said, then I’m sure whatever it is won’t attack you...”

It took her several seconds of staring at him, during which he got increasingly anxious, for her to work out what he meant.

“You think I’m worried I’ll get attacked?”

“Well,...” he kept shifting on his feet and avoid looking at her in the eyes, “you seem worried, and you hide away in the library a lot, and I know you are Muggle-born...”

“Well I...” the words got stuck in her throat as her brain still hadn’t unfrozen from his unexpected- was that _concern_ she was hearing? The idea seemed alien to her, that any of her classmate cared enough to actually notice her coming and going, or realize she might be targeted by whatever was terrorizing the school. They all just tended to avoid her, or just mock her of being a know-it-all. Not that she minded too much, since it had been the same in her Muggle school too. To know that there was someone who cared, or tried to console her, was... mind-blowing. For a moment she just didn’t know what to think. Then the moment passed, and she breathed in.

“Ah, no, I’m not actually worried. I just... I want to find out what is attacking all these people. The idea of the Chamber of Secrets...” she trailed off, not really know what she was trying to say.

“Oh,” Neville looked relieved, “so, ah, have you found out anything yet?”

“Well not really,” she used the excuse of looking at her notes and books to tear her eyes away from him, “I _think_ that whatever monster there is in the Chamber, you know, if there _is_ any, must be some kind of serpent. You know, because Slytherin was a Parsetongue...?”

“Yeah... I think you’re right,” Neville said, shifting on his feet again. Briefly she wondered if he meant to sit down next to her. “I wonder if whatever it is killed Hagrid’s roosters too. Although, they weren’t petrified...”

“Wait, what?”

“Oh, you don’t know? I heard Hagrid complaining the other day about how his roosters kept getting killed. But, well, that can’t be the monster, ‘coz their necks were broken...”

But Hermione didn’t hear any of the last part, hurrying as she was to reach the library the hundredth time. A few days more to confirm the theory, and she was beside herself.

A _basilisk_. All the clues were finally adding up. That evening in the common room, Hermione grasped a wide-eyed Neville by the arm, pulled him to a corner, rambling excitedly about it. It was mortal enemy of spiders, and the arachnids had been behaving oddly, fleeing the castle in a decidedly uncommon fashion. A rooster could kill a basilisk with its crow, so whoever was controlling the serpent had to kill them off. The eyesight of a basilisk was fatal, but none of the victims was killed, because they didn’t look at it directly; Dean Thomas saw it by its reflection in the puddle in front of the girl bathroom, Colin Creevey through his camera lens, Justin Finch-Fletchley through the ghost Nearly Headless Nick, and Nick was petrified because he was already dead. She just hadn’t figured out _how_ a basilisk get around the school yet, or where the Chamber of Secrets resided, or who the Heir of Slytherin was...

Throughout her rant Neville looked wide-eyed at her, until finally he asked: “So... did I help?”

“Sure you did, Neville.” Hermione beamed at him, “If it wasn’t for you telling me about the roosters, I wouldn’t have pieced it together.”

The smile he directed at her made her warm on the inside.

 

Unfortunately, figuring out what the Slytherin monster _was_ didn’t mean all the other questions started coming to her easily. She didn’t tell anyone other than Neville about her guess, choosing to keep it for herself. Her reasoning for this, every time the reasonable part of her brain raised its concern, was that nobody would listen to a know-it-all anyway; they would only mock her. Beside, whoever was controlling the basilisk didn’t seem like they wanted to kill anyone; there were just no way for all the petrifying-instead-of-kills to be accidents. The victims would all be fine after being given Mandrake Draught. Eventually. In the meantime it was best for her to continue investigating without adults holding her back out of misplaced concern.

It was a week later that she came across what she thought was the next breakthrough. There was no real reason why she had to come and ask Moaning Myrtle, a ghost she usually avoided, why she was kicking up a much worse rumpus than usual, but she did, and was landed with a wet, _blank_ diary for her trouble. When she took it back and wrote into it, it turned out to be a magical diary, in which the boy, Tom Marvolo Riddle, claimed to know who opened the Chamber some fifty years ago, and offered to show her. She agreed readily, excited to finally get some answer; instead, she was shown an thirteen years old _Hagrid_ accused of being the Heir of Slytherin for harboring an _Acromantula_. 

The Gryffindor was treated to a furious, screaming Hermione that afternoon when she stormed down from her dorm room, chucked the stupid diary out the window, shouting all the while about just what _idiot_ thought a _baby Acromantula_ could kill someone _without a bite mark to show for it_ anyway?! When her fury didn’t die down, she stormed out, heading straight to the library even though there was little chance of finding anything more than what she already knew. Luckily she still had her hand mirror on hand, which she used to look at corners (because there was nothing wrong with a little precaution.) When Penelope Clearwater of Ravenclaw saw her doing just that and asked about it, she readily gave her hyppothesis, which the Ravenclaw Perfect took in stride. They were just looking at a corner with it when Hermione saw a pair of big, yellow eyes, and darkness claimed her.

 

When she next woke up, it was a month before the end of term, and Neville was there with her.

“So, did you get it right?”

“I guess,” she shrugged, “Otherwise I’d be dead. How many victims were there after me?”

“Er, none. You were kind of the last.”

Hermione stared.

“When you and Clearwater were attacked there was an uproar. They were considering closing the school and everything, or at least chuck out Professor Dumbledore and get a new headmaster, but then there was no more attack. No one is really sure if that means the Heir has quitted or not, but then it was about that time that they took Hagrid to Azkaban...”

“They did _what?_ ”

It was Neville’s turn to shrug. “They took him to Azkaban. Said it was due to a past offend or something of the sort.”

“And now the attacks has stopped, so they are all think for sure that he was the culprit...” she finished for him. Her mind seemed to have frozen. Could it be that she was wrong, and Hagrid was really the Heir of Slytherin? But then she scoffed at her own thought. Right, like someone like Hagrid could ever had done all that. Never mind his mellow personality, one would have to be very cunning to orchestra all those attacks without actually ending up killing anyone. And Hagrid was certainly no Slytherin, in character or in blood. In fact, she did have a theory about Hagrid’s blood...

“So no one found the Chamber?”

“Nope.” Neville said, shaking his head.

Hermione dropped her head back downto the pillow. “Never mind then.”

 

In the frenzy of making up studies (she _did_ miss a month of school after all) and the end-of-term exams, it wasn’t until she was boarding the Hogwart Express home a month later did Hermione wonder what happened to Tom Riddle’s diary.


End file.
